UPDATE: I break in on Bob's post! Yes, it's always possible for me to do so, but I feel justified this time because I'm doing it to praise him. Bob has written of the best one-liners in economics; now he pens another in the article linked above: "Some very sharp academic economists are in a tizzy trying to treat this as an extra-credit question, rather than a crime scene."-- Gene

For many years, I have tried to warn motorists on the other side of a highway that there is a speed trap ahead of them. After I pass a cop lying in ambush, I wait a few moments (to catch people before it's too late for them) and then do a quick flash-flash with my lights. Do people get what I'm doing there, or would you, dear reader, assume I was telling somebody to turn on his lights?

Also, I wondered about the ethics of it. I think you could tell a plausible story where motorists announcing the presence of the cop, in effect just magnifies his effectiveness. I.e. if you did a huge model that had the police and motorists, and could show the different results from plugging in different strategies, then I think you could calibrate the payoffs such that everybody is happier when a certain fraction of motorists consistently warn others of a cop. It would be giving the police the option of deputizes a thousand citizens, as it were, to crack down on speeding, but the hitch is t…

Thomas Sowell writes:"Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders..."

"The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not."

"But bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos."

OK, Tommy baby (I now treat him with such disrespect as he has shown himself to be a mere pitchman for banking interests), how about this:

That $700 billion could completely pay off about 3.5 million $200,000 mortgages. If the Treasury gave people in risk of foreclosure that money, those people would keep their homes (yes, yes, the money would need to be in the form of coupons only good for m…

"Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government's interference in the housing market, the government's policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing. Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary, but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people inve…

This week we're doing Jewish attitudes towards death, and in preparing I came across this passage in the Bible:

"And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass..."

I really don't think there should be language like that in the Bible! I'm not quite sure what the act signifies, but I can imagine the servants around the campfire, laughing: "Man, Jebediah, Abraham sure did saddle your sorry old ass today!"

Take a quick look around the web, if you care to, and see how many pages of recipes tell you to "Remove the chilli seeds for a milder dish", or claim theat "The seeds are the hottest part of the chilli."

(It's true that the pith around them is the hottest, and if you happen to scrape that off while removing the seeds, you do getter a milder product. That may be where the "seeds are the hottest" legend comes from.)

I say that Gene should record his next lecture on Death & Dying, and then post it here. I shudder to think what happens when parents entrust their children to Gene's odd worldview, and yet I am eager to find out.

(2) The Don was a much cooler guy than Michael. The Don actually thought he had some principles of honor, as opposed to Michael who was more ruthless. E.g. the Don refuses to kill the guys who attacked the undertaker's daughter, because that wouldn't be justice; he says, "We're not murderers." When Sonny is late to a meeting because he was cheating on his wife, the Don works in a completely unnecessary question about the visitor's family, solely to be able to indirectly tell Sonny, "A real man keeps spends time with his family" (or something like that). After Sonny is killed, the Don says he wants no inquiries and no retaliation, and calls the families together for a truce. He initially doesn't want to deal drugs, but capitulates when he sees how much the other families want it. Finally, he swears on his g…

Here's a scary question for the class: What happens if the market opens way down on Monday, perhaps because everyone on Wall Street has had a weekend to reflect on $800 billion+ in money coming from the Phantom Zone? Will they shut down the stock exchanges? They banned short selling, why not just ban selling altogether?

In other words, it is just an idea, not some special category of ideas, since what idea cannot "replicate" (be passed around) and "evolve" (change)? Phony biological metaphors do not give 'meme' any added intellectual heft!

"# A unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea that can be transferred from one individual to another, and subjected to mutation, crossover and adaptation."

Oh, so societies have customs, practices, traditions, and mores, and those spread, are subject to cross-cultural influences, and change according to circumstances? Gee, before some weenies started saying 'meme', no one had realized this!

"# A cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation); "memes are the cultural counterpart of genes"."

I think I've invented a new dish -- at least I can't find a recipe for it on the Internet -- and so I offer the recipe hear to you:

Mashed Plantains and Chick Peas

3 yellow plantains (important -- not green like for boiling, and not black like for frying!)1 can chick peas1/8 pound butter4 ounces light cream1 handful of cilantro1 tsp garlic powdersalt and pepper to taste

Boil the plantains and chick peas until the plantains are soft. (The canned chick peas are being boiled to skirt the risk of botulism!)

As this bank is on the verge of failing, and I hear it's name on the news, I'm surprised to find it's pronounced "Wak-oh-vee-ya." I had been thinking "Wach-ova-ya," I had thought it was a Brooklyn institution promising to look out for you!

I can't figure out any use for the word "meme" other than to lend a spurious air of intellectual "gravitas" to something that might otherwise seem commonplace. For instance, take:'Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up".'

What does "meme" do in that sentence that could not be better done by:'Rickrolling is an Internet fad involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up"'?

In fact, 'fad' would be far better! But if you write 'meme', it shows that you are 'up' on current pseudo-intellectual lingo.

I had to wake up at 7 am to teach my class today -- a disgusting time for me -- but I did it, got to class on time, and gave a wonderful lecture. But then I had to face an almost 2 hour ride back to NYC, at a time when I was ready for a nap. I was driving along, a little drowsy,wondering if I'd have to pull over and sleep, when I came upon a big, bright yellow sign on the verge that read "BUMP."

Good God, I thought, the NY highway people know just what it is that I need to get through this drive... and how kind of them to recommend it right at this moment! Who says government never helps us out?

I've been watching the show Heroes on DVDs, and it's kind of entertaining, but, man oh man, they just didn't worry much about intellectual content when throwing this thing together, did they? Every time the young Indian guy starts talking "philosophy" I want to throw something at the computer. You could pretty much string random words from pop science and religion together with a computer program that placed English verbs, conjunctions, etc. between them and it would make no less sense than the blather the writers put in that guys mouth. "Cockroaches are the pinnacle of evolution"! If you view evolution scientifically, it has no "pinnacle". And if you view it spiritually, you certainly wouldn't place cockroaches at the "pinnacle"! "We only use 10% of our brains." That's an old urban legend with no basis whatsoever in fact.

And what's up with his accent? He's an American, raised in Texas, but if you're goi…

I literally stopped mid-lecture the other day when I saw one of my students wearing a "Flying Burrito Brothers" t-shirt in front of me to ask him about it. "No one" in the 1970s knew who they were, so it was pretty shocking to see their name on the shirt of a 20-year-old in 2008.

UPDATE: Did you know that "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow of the FBBs did special effects for Gumby, Davey and Goliath, The Outer Limits, The Empire Strikes Back, Gremlins, The Right Stuff, The Terminator, and Terminator 2.

We're feeling some uncertainty in the real estate market here tonight in West Central Florida.

This afternoon I visited a 1980s condo. It was a villa style unit, with about 1500 sf under air, a one car garage (3 bed bath), and looked almost liveable. It needed a new roof, maybe at total of $7,000 to $8,000 in direct expenses, plus I'd have to put in some sweat equity, painting, floors etc.

The asking price is $80,000, and I was told a lowball would not be a problem for the owner: Fannie Mae. They've had so many offers blow up because the buyers could not come up with the cash.

I spoke with the neighbor across the street in a similar unit. She told me she paid $170,000 for her condo unit two years ago.

The wife and I are hashing (hashing? man I wish she'd let me, but she wants me to be urine test clean, lest I need to find a job) it out over the price. We think a firm and final offer of $45,000 would be fair. Lehman will likely fail tonight, and the schmutz, as …

This one on Superman is pretty freaking funny, if you watched the cartoon. You can backtrack and read some of the other ones; I tried Batman and Wonder Woman, and they were OK, but not as funny as the Superman one.

BTW the cartoons (with fake dialogue) are pretty funny, so give those a chance too if you click on this thing.

I was just looking at the NASQAQ Composite hovering somewhere around 2200, and recalling March of 2000, when the index was at... 5048! It's well over eight years, and the index is still down well over 50% from its peak. When will we see NASDAQ 5000 again? 2015? (Of course, it could be much sooner -- it only took a few years to go from 700 to 5000.)

And if you bought at the peak, you must be wondering if you will ever catch up with inflation.

I just watched a debate between an atheist and a Christian where one side was horribly unprepared, so this one on US foreign policy was a very welcome contrast. I disagree very strongly with Kushner but he is a formidable debater.

BTW I have been on Scott's radio show several times. Here's a blast from the past.

While discussing the evacuation efforts in Texas as Ike was a few hours from landfall, Hannity actually said:

"Please, folks, if you're in the area and you're thinking of staying in your home, just follow the evacuation order. Even if there's no good reason to--Just do what the authorities say, OK?"

That's not an exact quote, but it is very close and is certainly the spirit of what he was saying. (If anyone can find the exact quote, I'll update this. It was on his radio show on Friday, September 12.)

I didn't until tonight. A seer uses his own spiritual power to peer into the future, while a prophet is more of a conduit for God (or a god). That is why prophets in the Old Testament gradually came to be seen as more respectable than seers (such as Joseph): they weren't "putting nature to the rack" (F. Bacon on experimental science) to get answers; they waited for God. Of course, necromancers were even worse: they were put to death. Their power was seen as genuine, but outright wicked.

2) The "guild prophets" wore odd haircuts and clothing, did strange, symbolic actions, went into trances, had visions, whirled about dancing ecstatically, and were regarded as very weird by the establishment: early Deadheads, clearly.

Autumn is hitting the Poconos. The leaves are beginning to turn, and today I saw my first turkey in months. (Why do they show up just before Thanksgiving? Are they asking to be eaten? And where were they the last few months?)

In honor of the season, here are some fun Pocono activities:

1) Find the cub!Hide a bear cub somewhere in your house, then see if the mother bear can guess which room it's in!

2) Find the tooth!See that guy with the plaid shirt and three-foot long beard at the end of the biker bar? You just know he's got a tooth in that mouth somewhere, because you just saw him chewing some jerky. But where, but where?

3) Find the Democrat!Somewhere in the town you're in, there's undoubtedly an Obama supporter lurking in some health food store or yoga clinic. But can you identify him/her on the first try?

UPDATE: As I post this, I see Wabulon is way ahead of me and has arrived at winter already!

Ah, my love, you’re showing a lot of throatFor this winter weather.Shall we stay, lie in the dark together,Warm and unwearying, wearing each other?Shall our days go by being forever ermine,Our small sun pocket high?Never mind, you won’t. Wind your hair about meOn the way and come, even out there we may be able to hide,Or will you? Sweet love, decide. Let your coat fall or not.

I was filling my tank at a Shell station today when I noticed a poster on the pump advertising hte quality of Shell's gas. Studies showed, the poster went, that Shell gas leaves your engine cleaner, etc. Just so the reader would be convinced these studies were "truly scientific," the poster showed him some scientists -- a Chinese guy and an Indian guy in lab coats.

If you want to convince today's American he's lookin' at real scientists, show him some Asian folk.

I've been listening to a lecture series on ancient Near Eastern religions of late, and the lecturer has confirmed something I've suspected for some time: the ancient Israelites, at least up through the time of Moses, were not monotheists, but, rather, henotheists -- that is, they did not believe that there weren't many gods, but that they had formed a covenant with one of the many gods, and were obliged to worship only him:

"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;

"Do not have any other gods before me...

"You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me..."

There are other gods, but the Lord is "a jealous God" -- not the only true god, mind you! -- and resents other gods being worshiped.

Looking up the piece with the details of my mugging, I found it was a diary entry, and right above it was something I had forgotten enough that it made me laugh all over again -- so I share it with you:

Monday, Feb. 7: Celebrating Rand’s BirthdaySince last Wednesday, February 2nd, was the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s birthday, I decided to have an "Ayn Rand day" of my own. Here’s my report on what I did:

8:40 AM:

I rolled out of bed and enjoyed a symbol of the fire in man’s mind. (I.e., a cigarette.) The previous day, in purchasing tobacco in anticipation of this celebration, I had been a little puzzled: just which brand is the most rational? Finally, I decided to buy a pouch of Golden Virginia and some rolling papers, as that way I could engage in productive activity (rolling) before smoking. (Of course, I bought a cigarette holder as well.)

After finishing my smoke, I showered, dressed, and got ready for my first big event of the day. I watched the house across the street o…

Last week I received a letter from someone asking details about my London mugging. (Details are at the bottom of the page I linked to, if you are curious.) I kind of brushed him (her?) off.

So yesterday I get this:

"I think you are a good writer. I am born 1959 too you know.So I am really interested about the two yoots and your mugging.I have questions about it. please answer them below1)were your two muggers african american2)did they steal your cell phone (when you said they scooped up your cell phone and took off running)3)who was that commuter on his cell phone to the police was that you or another person.I thought they stole your cell phone4)how much did your cell phone cost the one that the two muggers stole"

"please answer my questions"

I responded, "Who are you and why in the world do you want to know these things?"

Today, this comes back:

"I am a police in London. I am investigating this. so please give me information about it.1)when a commuter on…

"Before denouncing that as an intellectually indefensible position, it's worth asking what fraction of those who believe in the theory of evolution could accurately explain it—let alone do a competent job of describing the evidence for it. My impression is that most believers in evolution, like most believers in creationism, base their belief not on their own knowledge and thought but on what they have been told by the authorities they respect."

I recently heard a person loudly denouncing those who did not realize Darwinian evolution was "a proven fact." Here's a true believer whose is hugely ignorant of the history of science. No scientific theory is ever a proven fact -- it's the best guesss we've made so far, if it's the currently held theory.

Everyone seems to have found out about Salvia. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, living in a redneck hell like Florida which was in the vanguard of banning the plant.

Although I've been told that I wasn't sentient in 1965, I do know that I wasn't reading the New York Times back then. Didn't the Times run some incendiary articles about LSD, just prior to it becoming illegal? Didn't the Times cite examples of a (U Penn?) student going blind, from staring at the sun, while tripping?

The New York Times gets a hold of a story and pictures a Texas redneck lawmaker (yuck), and soon we'll see Salvia on the DEA's drug schedule.

In bathroom there is one of those little metal magazine racks on the floor. Inside it, there is a copy of Good Housekeeping, folded over saw that only half of the cover is visible. Next to a picture of the aforementioned actress I can see the headline fragment, "Why Is Jennifer Aniston..."

I have not yet looked to see what the rest of the headline is, but in my mind, it reads, "...on the Cover of This Magazine, When She Hasn't Done a Lick of Housekeeping in Her Adult Life?"

I forget, what happens now? Is there a shootout and the side with more readers wins?

I am happy to report that the legal proceedings have moved Silas' Barbie post from the top of his blog, where it had been sitting since August 27.*

* Yes Silas, this last comment was completely unfair and represents humor at your expense. Although it is true, it implies things about your post that are not true. Some would call it shameful what I have done.

I wondering why I'd want to assign my students (as is standard practice) one or more scholarly type research papers, when none or almost none of them will be going into academia. Sure, it's great to give them writing assignments, and I plan on plenty of those, but why should they be learning how t0o do bibliographical references and proper footnoting, since, once they leave college, they will probably never create a bibliography or a footnote again.

Regular readers know that a certain poster often departs from what many would consider to be the conventions of civility. (I am making no judgments in this post.) Recently Gene succumbed to the pleasures of his power as Administrator and began deleting comments from the person in question. This raises the question of what the final solution should be to our Silas Problem. I offer some possibilities, with commentary, below.

(1) Ban him. The problem here is that he can come back in alternate guises. Once we "out" him, is that new persona immediately banned too? Or does the new and improved Silas have to earn a fresh banning at that point? Also, we then run into problems of consistency. We have to start banning others if they cross "the line," meaning we have to define the line. There is also the efforts of enforcement. I for one don't feel like judging whom to ban, and going to the trouble of deleting posts. If we have a "hey we never ban" po…

Lew Rockwell lays it all out for libertarians who are excited about Palin's VP candidacy -- you're just getting duped into involvement in presidential politics:

"When a decent person accepts a job such as vice president, our first instinct is to celebrate that good people are in a position of power and influence. This is what McCain is counting on. But this is an illusion. The influence runs completely the other way. Good people become part of the party machine and surrender all their principles in order to survive. This, sadly, is the future of Sarah Palin, who may have been doing some good in Alaska..."

"There are names I could mention here in our time, former libertarians now holding high political appointments in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy. They know who they are. They can pretend superiority, that they are "getting their hands dirty" while the rest of us are merely typing away at our keyboards. But in fact, they have become responsible fo…

(More alliteration for you.) What we've got here is a failure to communicate. I ran into this back in the day when I was foolish enough to dive into the Intelligent Design debate. I would end up arguing with very smart believers in orthodox neo-Darwinism, and they would keep giving me implications of their theory as if they were evidence for its truth.

The same happens when I (again, foolishly) try to show why the climate change consensus is not as airtight as its strongest advocates assert. For example, the consensus currently says that if you double CO2 concentrations, the long-run equilibrium (i.e. after all feedbacks play out) effect on the global temperature will be about 3C. (They give a range, but 3C is best point guess.) And then this estimate of the earth's "climate sensitivity" is the basis for the projections about the optimal carbon tax, why we need to take immediate action, etc.

Now as you know, there are PhDs in the relevant fields who challenge thi…

OK cr*p, let's get this out in the open... Here is a WP story that does its best to cast Ron Paul and my personal friend Tom Woods as liars. My quick reactions:

(1) I have no problem with ghostwriting. I have ghostwritten things for people and I don't think it is dishonest, generally speaking. I'm sure you could come up with scenarios (like writing somebody's term paper), but especially if you are drawing on a public person's previously promulgated policies (holy alliteration!!), and then let the person read over what you've done before it goes out the door, I think you're going to have a hard time drawing any meaningful line in the sand. Nobody objects to politicians using speechwriters, right? The only thing I could see being a problem, is if the listeners / readers didn't realize the process and would be disheartened to learn the truth. Then, the ghostwriter might be running into moral issues. But from Tom's description, that doesn't …

I've been reading the novels of Dorothy Sayers for the third time the last week. If you enjoy mystery novels at all, and don't know Sayers, you must check her out. Not only could she write mysteries, she was a brilliant thinker -- one of the first women to earn a degree from Oxford University, the originator of the Guinness ad campaign with the toucan, conversant in the latest intellectual advances, and a renowned translator of Dante -- and this powerful intellect is apparent in her works.

Part of the fascination of her work is the way in which she captures England on the cusp -- the pre-war England of Victoria was fading away, and the new England rising, but, in the 20s, both were visible, and Sayers brilliantly plays on the tension between the two. In ways, the 1920s were like a dress rehearsal for the 1960s, and Sayers also captures this spirit of social novelty: giant cocaine parties, unmarried couples living together, political radicalism, and so on.

It reveals just how awful we all are. Under a monarchy, for example, would Andrew Sullivan have had any reason to demand that a woman make her medical records public, so that he can "breathe a sigh of relief and move on"?

Sure. And what's the whole point of the position of vice president? Why, to be able to step in for the President should need arise, of course! So the exact same criteria for fitness apply to either office.